Bottle Creek still holds mysteries in Tensaw River Delta

Mound A at Bottle Creek was built more than 500 years ago and stands 45 feet high. (Guy Busby/Press-Register)

In 1702, a young French-Canadian climbed a 45-foot mound on an isolated island deep in the Tensaw River delta.

The island had been home to as many as 2,000 people in the 1300 and 1400s. By the start of the 1700s, it was almost deserted, but still held in esteem by the local tribes. An Indian, who had been paid with a gun to guide the young man to the spot, would not approach the remains of a temple on the top of the mound.

Alone, the young man entered the temple. Inside, he found five clay figures, a man, woman, child, bear and owl. No giant boulders rolled down to chase the explorer although his guide was reported to be terrified that he’d taken the objects.

The young man, Jean Baptiste LeMoyne de Bienville, went on to win fame for his role in founding Mobile and New Orleans.

More than 300 years later, last Sunday, about 50 people stood on top of the same mound. We didn’t have to pay anyone with a gun, but Bottle Creek is still not the easiest place to reach. It still took about an hour to reach the site by boat from Lower Bryant’s Landing north of Bay Minette.

Around 1250, Indians from the Moundville area came south and began living on the site. The site where we were standing, Mound A, is the tallest of the 18 mounds on the island. The structure probably took about 100 years to build in stages, one woven basket of clay at a time, Greg Waselkov, director of the University of South Alabama Center for Archaeological Studies, told the group.

The temple is long gone. Bienville sent the clay figures to France and no one knows what happened to them.

Isolated in the Delta, Mound Island still holds mysteries. No one is sure why the Indians chose the location. One theory was that they wanted a share of the lucrative trade in seashells between the coast and inland tribes.

Another reason may have been protection. The area was already occupied when the Indians came down from the north and the newcomers would have been considered invaders. Signs of fortifications have been found around parts of the island.

No one is sure where the dirt for the mounds came from. The island has two areas where clay was dug from pits, but the sites are too small to account for all the dirt needed to build the mounds.

The site was a political, cultural and religious center for about 300 years, controlling a region from the Florida Panhandle to the Mississippi River.

Climbing the equivalent of more than four stories up the steep sides of the slope gives you an appreciation for the scale of the undertaking. From the top of the mound, you look down on what was a thriving community more than 700 years ago.

The culture that built the mounds vanished around the time of first European contact. Even their own descendants, the Creeks and Choctaws, were baffled by the mounds. Today, the site looks much as it did when Bienville visited.

The structures they left behind were well-engineered, a reminder lying isolated in the Delta of the capabilities of those who came before us.

Guy Busby is a reporter for the Baldwin Register. He can be reached at 251-219-5490 or gbusby@press-register.com.